


Oxymorons

by poetroe



Category: The Dragon Prince (Cartoon)
Genre: Claudia-centric, F/F, Fluff, Future, Future Fic, Oxymorons, Peace, Raydia, idk how to tag this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-10
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-17 03:47:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29960469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poetroe/pseuds/poetroe
Summary: Claudia’s life after an era of war seems to be nothing but a collection of oxymorons. Rayla returns after a journey through the Pentarchy.
Relationships: Claudia/Rayla (The Dragon Prince)
Kudos: 7





	Oxymorons

**Author's Note:**

> this fic has had quite the journey.....I wrote the first 500 words of it two years ago, but recently my love for raydia got reignited so I dug this story up from my drafts folder and decided to finish it! the story is set somewhere vaguely in the future, post-canon and post-claudia's redemption. hope u enjoy !!

Oxymoron [ ok-si-mohr-on ] /ˌɒksɪˈmɔːrɒn/, noun: a figure of speech in which apparently contradictory terms appear in conjunction, producing an incongruous, seemingly self-contradictory effect.

Claudia’s life after an era of war seems to be nothing but a collection of oxymorons.

Maybe it’s that her life has always contained them, but she has only started to notice them, now that’s she’s no longer preoccupied with conflict. Maybe they’ve been created, according to some contingent plan she had been unaware of. It’s in the pure white locks amongst her pitch black hair and all of her knowledge of dark magic, that she will never use again. It’s in Soren, his boundless energy contained in his persisting injuries. It’s in the princes, too—or, the king and the crown prince—Callum is the mightiest human mage on earth and has connected to the arcanum of multiple primal sources, but his position at the right hand of king Ezran in this era of peace mostly renders their usefulness void. The king himself is a teenager, a child even, playing the part of being a father to the entire kingdom.

Like Callum, Claudia keeps to matters of state these days. Diplomacy and other real world issues have turned out to be just as challenging to figure out as spells or incantations, though requiring a lot more of her patience. Currently, she’s bent over a proposal from the ambassador of Duren to give one of the rapidly growing towns near the Xadian border certain trading rights, like the monopoly on the trade of rare Sunforged blades and armory and wines from the vineyards deep in the Xadian interior. Of course, this proposal has met with resistance from the other kingdoms who do not have the same geographical advantage of bordering Xadia and want to protect their own trade with the Far East. The past few weeks for Claudia have been filled with outlining different options and possibilities, presenting them to her king and the representatives from Duren and the other kingdoms, but it’s going nowhere. Claudia smiles in spite of the jammed negotiations—another oxymoron. It falls in line with all the others she’s encountered in the past days: this is just the last minor crisis following the other ones making up this conflict of peace, this obstinacy of diplomacy, that Claudia has to deal with in the perpetual darkness within the walls of a castle which is otherwise bright with life, love, and promise. Then again, Claudia thinks, it must be hard to keep a castle with walls this thick adequately lighted.

The dim, orange light of the setting sun has fallen into Claudia’s eyes, a sure sign that it’s time to stack up the papers cluttering her desk and call it quits for today. Just when she’s tidied up her workspace and stands up to trade the twilight of this room for that of her bedroom, the door flies open, slamming against the wall with a bang and making Claudia jump so badly a few papers are sent flying.

“Oops, sorry,” a soft, lilting voice says. “My bad.” Claudia grins, leaving her paperwork where it falls and immediately moving across the room to wrap her arms around her oldest elven friend.

“You scared the living daylights out of me,” Claudia mutters in Rayla’s shoulder, before pulling back and giving her a knowing smirk. “Excited to be back?” Rayla returns her grin and nods.

“Very,” she says. “Strange as it feels to say it, I’ve missed this place.”

“Yeah?” Claudia asks, as she lights a couple of candles and pulls out a chair for Rayla. “I mean—of course, it’s only natural that you missed my electrifying presence on your journey.”

“On the contrary,” Rayla answers with a playful grin. “Although, I probably would have if you hadn’t written me so much.”

A closer look at her betrays specks of dirt clinging to her boots, minute traces of dust on her clothes and her face, and the messenger bag Callum gave her still securely slung over her shoulder. It was barely even a promise, one that could’ve easily been forgotten, made in Rayla’s scratchy handwriting on one of the very first slips of paper Claudia received in her absence: _I’ll come find you the second I get back_.

“Hold on,” Claudia says, turning towards the door, trusting the heat in her cheeks to be invisible in the falling darkness. They might be here a while. “I’ll make us some tea.”

With both hands cupped around a mug with steaming black tea, Rayla tells her about her journey through the Human Kingdoms.

From Katolis, she had initially traveled to the Kingdom of Duren, traveling through the dense forests that make up the border between the two kingdoms. It had taken a week for the mountainous land to start morphing into hills, containing the vast, sloping grainfields and orchards that are so distinctive for Duren. A stop in the capital to meet with the Queen and deliver some documents for Ezran, a night in one of the city’s inns, and then she had continued onwards.

Although the first leg of the trip was partly business, the rest of it was solely for Rayla, alone. With the era of unrest and conflict between humans and Xadians finally having come to an end, all of them had gotten the time and opportunity to explore the things that were previously discarded before the urgency of the fight, the challenge of reuniting their worlds and closing the chasm that their history had created.

Claudia understood Rayla’s reasons for the trip very well. The war had taken place mostly along the Xadian border, sometimes stretching further into the elven territories. Despite all of the years and effort spent mending human and elf relations, Katolis was still the only human kingdom Rayla had ever seen. So, she’d set out to explore the Pentarchy.

Parts of the journey, like the general trajectory and the places where Rayla stayed longer than just a day were already known to Claudia, thanks to their correspondence. But Rayla tells her about everything, not limiting herself to the broad strokes of the journey, and—deliberately, Claudia suspects—going into considerable detail.

She had left her mount in Neolandia’s capital upon arriving there. The deserts of that country stretch nearly all the way to its coastline, but she was able to visit the villages in the palm oases with the aid of a human merchant called Lek and his vessel, a light, wooden craft with a large canvas sail, to traverse the expanse of sand and dunes. He had introduced her to a desert delicacy, a pale fruit that is covered with spikes on the outside, but soft and red on the inside, tasting bittersweet.

An oxymoron embodied, Claudia’s mind unhelpfully supplies.

Rayla had left the arid plains for the rugged mountains of Del Bar, a kingdom that, in a sense, was even harder to travel through than Neolandia. This stretch of the journey crossed snowy mountains and freezing valleys. It was here that her correspondence with Claudia had momentarily stopped, thanks to the harshness of the terrain making it too dangerous to send out a messenger. Here, Rayla had acquired a thick leather coat in the Del Bar style, lined with sheep’s wool, that protected her skin from the harsh winds and dropping temperatures. Excitedly, she tells Claudia about the smithy she stayed at, where she tasted pale ale for the first time. She had joined a hunt in exchange for the room and afterwards, the blacksmith had made her a dagger, proudly proclaiming to be the first human smith to make a weapon for an elf.

“I don’t know how historically accurate that was,” Rayla chuckles. Dark, nearly black metal glistens in the flickering candlelight as she, like the rolled up coat before, fishes it out of Callum’s bag and hands it over to Claudia.

“It’s beautiful,” Claudia mutters, turning the weapon over in her hands. It is, in fact quite simple. Unlike some royal swords, there are no gilded details or rare gems inlaid in the hilt. What makes it stunning is the black color of the metal, so dark that it seems to absorb any light that comes into contact with it. “And so dark… It reminds me of the night sky during the new moon.”

The blade itself softly curves upward, in the style of some Neolandic weapons—as Claudia’s fingers glide across it, she feels the thin edge press sharply against her fingertips, promising a cut if she presses any harder. “That’s what I said,” Rayla smiles.

Claudia has seen many weapons in her life, but none like this one. “How did he even make this?”

“Apparently, a week before I arrived there, a meteor crashed into the valley, about an hour away from the village,” Rayla tells her. “He had taken some of the ore from it and refined it, so it could be made into weaponry.” Her smirk broadens. “I was simply the lucky warrior who passed by his smithy first.”

“It’s fitting for a Moonshadow Elf, I suppose,” Claudia says, meaning not just its similarity to the night sky but the way it doesn’t glimmer, making it perfect for stealth. With a smooth motion, she slides the dagger back into its sheath, the dull leather not betraying the sharpness it holds inside.

From the mountainous region of Del Bar, Rayla traveled to the coastal lands, from there finding passage on a merchant ship headed to Evenere. The never-ending ocean was ineffable, the water impossible to capture either with hands or with words but Rayla tries regardless, describing with vigor the scale of colors she saw in the sky and the glittering water as the sun sank into it.

Evenere is unlike any of the other kingdoms in the sense that it has no capital city, no central stronghold where its ruler sits. Instead, there are multiple small towns, scattered beyond the swampy wetlands in tiny groupings. Some are close to the coast and others are hidden in the bog, but the salty air persists everywhere. Rayla had visited multiple of them, curious to immerse herself into the culture of a people that seem as disconnected from the Human Realm as Xadia once was. The people there take care of their own, separated as they are from their neighbors.

Claudia’s intake of air abruptly halts when Rayla tells her that attitude reminded her of her.

“They are admirably self-sufficient,” she says. The mug in her hands is long empty, and she carelessly rolls it back and forth between her palms. “Sometimes too much so, so stubborn in their resolve that they won’t accept any help from outsiders.”

“And that reminded you of me?” Claudia asks challengingly, a smile playing around her lips.

“You know what I mean,” Rayla replies as she rolls her eyes. “After you… _changed_ —” It’s a rather vague word to describe the betrayal of her father and his cause in favor of that of the princes, but Claudia finds she appreciates the ambiguity. “—and I got to know you better, I found that you can be pretty stubborn.” When Claudia keeps resolutely shaking her head, Rayla sighs. “Claudia, you never accept help. It’s a fact of life.”

“What?” Claudia responds, with faux outrage. “That’s not true. I asked Ez to help me out with Nim just yesterday.”

Nimrod is her pet owl, a magical creature with a connection to the moon primal, like Rayla. On one of their last ventures into Xadia, during the immediate aftermath of the war, she had found him, laying scared and injured in the moonberry bushes. That the name Nimrod, used to mean idiot aside from its traditional meaning of hunter, could be considered an oxymoron hasn’t occurred to Claudia before right now.

“Don’t act so oblivious,” Rayla rebounds, “you probably just asked him to help you clean his cage, or make a change to his diet. Tasks you don’t mind delegating. It’s different when it’s something important to you.”

Claudia knows she’s right. Rayla has had a first row view to her sleepless nights, filled with endless strategizing, magic books and dripping candle wax, as Claudia took it upon herself to stop her father and his dark magic. She hadn’t been on her own then, Callum trying to help her as best he could with his budding magical talents, but Claudia had insisted on shouldering the responsibility alone.

How long they’ve been sitting in the darkness of Claudia’s study, she doesn’t know, but the moon has risen high enough to cast a beam of soft light through the window onto the desk, and the candles are burning low enough that some of them have already petered out.

“You’re right,” Claudia mutters, leaning back against in her chair. She could’ve kept denying, but Rayla knows her better than that, anyway. “Still, I don’t think I would fit in, in Evenere.”

The markings under Rayla’s eyes seem almost black in this dim lit room, but the candlelight dances across her face and makes her lilac irises look as if they’re glowing. “Why not?”

“The way you speak about them…” She sighs. “It’s not that I have that strong a sense of community, or a loyalty to one.” When her eyes meet Rayla’s, there are some things that go unsaid. Their mutual closeness is implied, carried by the prolonged eye contact, as well as the unusual connotations that go along with relations between humans and elves. Still, Claudia senses Rayla doesn’t quite believe her. “I know what you’re going to say,” she says. “I’m an advisor to the king of Katolis, so I should feel some sort of compassion for the people of Katolis, right? Well, I don’t.”

“That’s a pretty ugly thing to say.”

“ _That’s_ an oxymoron.” Rayla snorts but Claudia ignores it, intent on finishing her train of thought. “The only people I care about are my friends, my brother, and you. And Nimrod.”

Rayla gives her a look, the meaning of which isn’t completely clear to Claudia, but it is one of fondness and one she has been on the receiving end of many times already. It’s also one she’s had to miss over the past few weeks.

The silence that settles between them is a comfortable one, rooted in a mutual trust and countless of hours already spent like this: alone, together. Another oxymoron, Claudia realizes, along with the fact that there is no one in the Pentarchy or Xadia who she can do this with, except Rayla.

Claudia’s life as it is right now, is filled with oxymorons. She only has to look at the girl in front of her to see and categorize them. Rayla is terribly nice and almost painfully beautiful, especially now, with the moonlight hitting her nose, and the white braid that rests against her cheek just right. Claudia is a clever fool, the perfect screwup. The morning Rayla left, she had tried to vocalize her fledgling feelings. She had been unable to, that day—but in Rayla’s absence, those feelings had spread their wings and taken flight.

Cautiously, she wraps her hands under the seat of her chair and shuffles closer to Rayla, only sitting back down when their knees are touching. “I missed you a lot, you know,” Claudia says, her voice a loud whisper. Her head is turned away slightly, her eyes looking up at the moon, unseeing.

Rayla’s hand comes to rest on her knee, inching closer to where Claudia’s hands are resting in her lap. “I missed you, too,” she says. “I should’ve brought you with me.” Her tone is as soft as Claudia’s, a truth being shared like a rumor.

Their eyes meet and Claudia realizes it’s a secret they were both already privy to, in a way. There was always an innate longing in Rayla’s letters, which could have easily been interpreted as a longing for home, regardless of whether that would be Katolis’ castle or the Silvergrove. It feels better now that they’ve established the fact of the matter: Rayla wanted to see her again, just like Claudia did.

The last candle finally runs out of fuel and dies out, indicating it’s time to go to bed. But Claudia isn’t done with this night just yet and moves to light a new candle, entering Rayla’s personal space to reach the matches on the desk.

That’s when Rayla, arguably the braver girl out of the two of them, grabs her arm and holds her in place. Claudia freezes in place at the unexpected contact—a perfect mistake, as Rayla uses the moment to lean in and press her lips to Claudia’s.

The shock melts into a warmth in her chest, unfolding like the petals of a flower. She’s utterly immersed in it: Rayla’s braid, swishing against her face, the puff of breath that hits her cheek as Rayla exhales through her nose, the three fingers that come to rest on her cheek, holding her in place.

“I should’ve done this when you came to see me off,” she mutters against Claudia’s lips after they break apart, echoing Claudia’s earlier regret.

“If I was as courageous as you, I would have,” Claudia responds. The calm storm of butterflies still rages through her chest, pushing her forward to hold Rayla’s soft cheeks in her hands, thumbs rubbing softly over the familiar markings before she pulls her into another kiss. As she does, Rayla’s hands come to rest on her hips, her fingers blazing trails over her back in the darkness, a peaceful conquest of what is already hers.

Parting is a sweet sorrow, but Claudia can forgive that particular oxymoron. They separate for the night, spending too long on whispered _goodnights_ and _sleep wells_ before finding the way to their rooms. Claudia isn’t able to stop a stupidly happy grin from creeping onto her face as she closes her door and leans against it.

Tomorrow, the sun will rise over the mountains to the east of the castle, like it has done and will do for eternity. Her work will still be there, the rejected proposals mounting. The thought barely registers in her mind, because most importantly, Rayla will be there: the most important variable in Claudia’s life, having turned into a constant in the middle of this night.

**Author's Note:**

> fun drinking game: take a shot at every oxymoron u spot


End file.
